


An còir seann luchd-eòlais dhol à beachd

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: BDSM, D/s, F/M, mild breathplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:30:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The old year sluices off their bodies with the warm water, leaving them primed and ready to welcome the new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An còir seann luchd-eòlais dhol à beachd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [convenientmisfires](https://archiveofourown.org/users/convenientmisfires/gifts), [Waterfights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waterfights/gifts).



> This is _explicit_ D/s in an established relationship, with mentions of mild breathplay and rough (consensual) sex.
> 
> Title is the first line of Auld Lang Syne in Scots Gaelic.

Helen actually doesn’t know which is worse - punishment or the dread she has before it. She’s earned it. One of the good things about Will is that he only metes out what’s fair and she’s reaped an evening of being stretched out and played until she’s past her breaking point. She’s gone and made him jealous, albeit subconsciously so, and now she earns her payment on her knees in stretches of silence that seem to be infinite.

In this way, Will slays the only thing that’s ever been able to best her. Will manages to shrink her world to the here and now, fetters her reach and her connections and puts blinders on her sight so that time is no longer an issue. Time, her nemesis, is kept in check when she’s on her knees and when he has her sobbing, begging and pleading, time no longer matters. Nothing matters, except him, and it’s that single-minded focus that makes her clearer for days to come afterward. Solutions to age-old problems are realized in the hazy moments after she’s been beneath the proverbial lash and stretched on the occasionally-not-so-proverbial rack. 

It frees her. _He_ frees her.

She’d thrown a party for the new year, the first she’d had in a century. New years have long been things of contention for her since as each year passed, she lost more and more, but Will has awakened something of her old impetuousness and it’d been a while since she’d really had a party. Invitations had gone out far and wide and while most were old friends, there were a handful of political invitees that Helen thought it best to get on the good side of. 

She’d been chatting with one, a financier from Switzerland, and he’d drawn his fingertips from the bend of her elbow to her wrist in a strange intimacy that Helen would have chalked up to eccentricity had Will not been there. She’d laughed and smiled and Will swept her away for the next dance, the last before midnight.

“You’ll be on your knees tonight no later than five after,” he’d warned and the kiss he took was no chaste brush of lips to keep an old tradition. It was bruising and possessive, a show for everyone in the room as well as a reminder to her that she belonged to him and nobody else. Possession, as demonstrated by Will, was nothing like the grating and cloying insistence that John had on dogging her every move or even the occasional fit of pique Nikola showed. It was simple: she was his, or he was hers no longer.

She’d always liked that Will didn’t play games with it. Oh, they played games with everything else, certainly, but not with that. It was the only hard and fast rule of their relationship and one that Helen did not intentionally try to breach. Unintentionally occasionally happened, as tonight, and she would have to suffer her lashes accordingly. If the kiss was any hint as to what Will had in mind to express his displeasure, she’d have a bit of sweetness along with the sting tonight. 

Which is how, precisely, she’d ended up kneeling upon the parquet floor in her bedroom without a stitch on besides her party mask (a deep, sapphire silk) and the sapphire and platinum pendant that hung heavy around her neck. Her dress had been black chased with silver and while beautiful, not what Will preferred, so off it came along with the rest of her clothing. She’d piled it neatly in her chair at three past and knelt in the floor. 

Now she waits. Will likes to make her wait, especially when it’s an object lesson like it is tonight, and she carefully studies the patterns in the floor and doesn’t dare move other than to breathe. She can hear the metronomic click of her carriage clock, ticking the seconds into this new year and it seems that Will is in no hurry. It’s seventeen past when she dares look up at the sound of footsteps down the hall but a few more moments reveals the low, husky laughter of Kate and whoever she’s chosen to ring the new year in with. More minutes pass. More ticks of the clock.

The door swings in at thirty-seven after and Helen is so relieved she lets out a shuddery little sigh. Will smells of champagne, but only faintly; he’d never come to her drunk before and he apparently didn’t intend to now. This is about control, tightly held, and Will is always in complete mastery of his faculties whenever he plays with her. Anything less, anything that impairs him, and he isn’t with her this way. In other ways, certainly, and Helen’s found she likes those too but it’s this that makes Will special. It’s this that makes her crave him.

“Have you been thinking?” His voice is cool and detached and Helen knows, deep down, that it’s because he’s holding onto his control with both fists. Will is affectionate and kind by nature and while he plays this role with consummate skill and execution, it is not one that has ever occurred to him before coming to her bed. He understands it with an intimacy that makes Helen think he could be cruel if he wanted but he never gives into that. He’s always approached it intellectually and while he takes pleasure in making her writhe, he never takes pleasure in hurting her just to hurt her. That’s for another man, long ago, and now forgotten.

“Yes,” Helen says softly. She dips her head low in deference only for Will to circle around behind her and wind his hand into her hair. He uses it to tip her head up and back, forcing her to meet his eyes and while she had been thinking, now she’s blissfully blank. This is what he does for her. He burns her clean and lets her start anew. Helen watches as he licks his lips, a tell to stall for time, and voices his question again.

“About? What have you been thinking about?”

It takes her a moment to find herself because she gets lost in this, lost in the sensation of just _feeling_ and not thinking. Her neck burns from being stretched at this unnatural angle and her back is straight, pushing her breasts up high. Will’s eyes flick down to them, watching them rise and fall as she breathes, and a faint smile curves his lips. She smiles too; there’s nothing she likes better than pleasing him.

“How to apologize. I was wrong to let him flirt with me. I should have put a stop to it and I didn’t. I wanted to curry his favor.”

It’s more than he asked for, certainly, but being in this room with Will is worse than being under a thousand lamps, subject to a thousand interrogators. It’s truth serum, what he does to her, and confessions fall easily from her lips when he puts her in this place. It’s a great power he has, one that he employs to terrible effect.

“I’ll take suggestions, you know. It’s too easy to just tell you what I want and to let you give it to me. Besides, it’ll be interesting to see what you select as your punishment, what your psyche deems as sufficient self-flagellation. I’m a shrink. It gets me off.” Will releases her hair and Helen lets her chin tip back down, eyes on the floor again. She watches Will’s feet as he paces back and forth, watches the way the supple Italian leather of his shoes gives and doesn’t make a sound. Will wasn’t born to privilege but he looks damn good in the trappings of it.

“I’ll let you own me,” Helen hastily suggests. She hasn’t thought through the hows and whys of that and she scrambles to come up with some way to demonstrate it. She looks up and sees that Will has cocked his head, clearly interested in what she has to say, and that encourages her to go on. “I’ll let you fuck me and come all over me. I’ll let you use me and remind me that I’m yours.”

Will is quiet for the next few moments before it seems like he makes a decision and hastily starts pulling off his clothes. Normally, he has Helen do it, but Helen hasn’t exactly earned the right to touch him tonight. She’s misbehaved and part of her punishment seems to be denying her the thing she wants most. Will basks in her touch. He glows under her attention and craves it almost as much as she craves the lash from him. It’s a strange, fragile balance they have and she wouldn’t change it for anything.

The order is harsh in the quiet, “Suck my cock,” and Helen is quick to comply. He hasn’t said, but she feels she’s not allowed to use her hands and she keeps them behind her back while she draws him past her lips and laves him with her tongue. Will can’t check his reactions nearly as well now but when she swallows and he brushes against the back of her throat, he lets out a strangled moan and closes his hand around her shoulder. A few fingers stray to her neck, pressing just hard enough to make her light-headed, and it’s with some effort that he pulls her off him.

He yanks her to her feet none too gently and nods toward the bed. Helen sits on the edge of it and barely gets a moment to catch her breath before Will grabs her ankles and drags her so that her ass is perched on the edge of the mattress. Her bed is high enough off the ground that he can fuck her this way and he does. Normally, Will likes a long, slow fuck and likes taking his time to know her inside and out. Tonight is different. Tonight is about branding her his, over and over, and when he pushes into her it’s rough and the angle is off just enough that there’s a hint of pain that blurs the edges of her pleasure. Helen curls her hands into the smooth silk of her duvet and whimpers, head thrashing against the soft fabric. 

She can hear the change in Will’s breathing and knows that he’s close and instead of one last thrust, brutal and satisfying, he pulls out and spills himself hotly against her breasts and stomach. She’d said he could own her and this, apparently, is the way he’s chosen to do it. Helen dares to open her eyes just enough to see the clench in his jaw relax and the glint in his eyes soften into something else entirely. He gently slides out of her and leans over her to press a kiss against her forehead.

“Good girl. Sweet girl. You did well.” Praise like this would be utterly foreign outside her bedroom but now, with Will gently bringing her to her feet and putting her into the shower, it seems right. The water is just a touch shy of too hot and it steams up the whole room but it feels like heaven against her stretched muscles. Will runs a cloth over her, gently cleaning her, but when his hand slips lower between her thighs, the cloth is nowhere to be found.

It’s his fingers here, instead, and he wraps one arm around her waist to pull her back against him while his fingers gently touch and explore. She’s still sore from before but she doesn’t wince. She knows the touches will be gentle now, sweet, because she’s paid her price and now she gets to be rewarded. He plays her to an orgasm with a few clever slips of his fingers and thumb and when she gasps, spiraling toward her own bliss, he covers her mouth and takes a kiss that’s sweet and reassuring instead of bruising and raw.

The old year sluices off their bodies with the warm water, leaving them primed and ready to welcome the new.


End file.
